Chinese Users Annoyed By Ads In OnePlus 3’s HydrogenOS

OnePlus is a very well-known smartphone manufacturer by now. This company had introduced four devices thus far, and their latest flagship, OnePlus 3, arrived quite recently, and has managed to make a big splash in the tech world. The OnePlus 3 is made entirely out of metal this time around, and it packs in the Snapdragon 820, 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, along with the fingerprint scanner and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The phone’s camera is also quite capable, and you get all that for $499 (price varies from region to region).

That being said, the company includes their very own Android skin on this device as well, and they call it OxygenOS. Now, to be clear, OxygenOS ships on top of Android when it comes to global OnePlus 3 variants, while the Chinese model comes with HydrogenOS, which is also OnePlus’ Android skin, but meant only for the Chinese market. Now, many of you probably never had the chance to play around with HydrogenOS, but it is quite a bit different than OxygenOS, and it seems like the latest version actually ships with some ads as well. OnePlus had promised that they won’t look for profit by inserting advertising tools in the HydrogenOS, but it seems like that’s not the case. OnePlus 3 users in China have been complaining that ads have been somewhat annoying in the latest version of HydrogenOS, but not in the way you think. OnePlus seems to have added the ‘Live services’ section in the OS (on the ‘Dial’ interface), which is a one-stop service offering express taxi, prepaid tickets, entertainment, etc. Now, the problem is, the columns cannot be closed in this app, and ads are quite annoying, at least that’s what the reports say. The ‘Live services’ app is not all that useful according to the report, mainly because the prices are not all that competitive, and the ads are making the whole experience that much worse.

Now, based on this report, it seems like ads are limited to the ‘Live services’ app, though we cannot be sure considering the fact that the source did not elaborate on this. If the ads are, in fact, limited to the ‘Live services’ app, then they’re not that much of a problem, as long as OnePlus doesn’t push ads while you’re using your device regularly or something of the sort. It is also worth mentioning that ads are a common occurrence when it comes to Chinese ROMs, Xiaomi’s MIUI OS also comes with ads on the inside. Either way, we’ll let you know if more info surfaces regarding ads in HydrogenOS considering that we don’t have all the info at the moment.